Hi,
In May 2024, Malou travelled across the Alps to come to our ‘place’ – I can’t say barn, because we don’t have one. My friend Giulia Gaibazzi and her husband Eugenio have created a little horse paradise up in the hills close to Parma, in Northern Italy.
Side note: Parma is known for its ham (Prosciutto), Parmesan cheese and the Verdi festival (Verdi was born in the province of Parma).
Our horses live in a beautiful environment immersed in the forest and its wild life can be a bit scary at times.
Malou was given the time she needed to adjust to this new setting. During the first two weeks, she was integrated with two geldings, Airus and Cosmo, which went smoothly as Malou has excellent social skills. Pretty soon the boys were enamoured 😍
We benefit from this friendship as we start the training. Our riding arena is located at a distance from the horse paddocks, surrounded by forest, which can be scary. Particularly when our resident deer, Tino, roams the area.
Taking at least one of her new friends along when working Malou in the arena, kept her relaxed and concentrating on the lesson.
We cannot expect our horses to learn when they are worried. Taking a friend along is an easy management solution. In the long run, you want to develop the confidence in your horse, that allows her to stay relaxed even if her friend doesn’t come along but that may require a separate training plan.
Giulia took Malou out for walks together with her friends while I began with the Clicker training foundation lessons. Malou was already Clicker savvy, but you should never assume anything, and remember that this is a completely new environment.
Therefore, we went through the same first steps as a clicker novice but at a considerably quicker pace.
We start in protective contact. This means that there is a solid barrier between horse and trainer and it protects both. Should your horse get too interested in the treats you carry, you can simply step away from her. And if she finds this interaction uncomfortable, she can walk away.
It’s also wise not to assume that she knows how to take the treats. Throwing a few treats in the feed bucket allows me to check if she finds them. Since I didn’t know Malou, I also offered different types of treats: carrot coins, my grass pellets and pellets she brought from home.
Those quick trials at the very beginning are important and don’t take much time.
I am sharing the video of this first lesson. Never mind my poor Italian as I’m explaining the lesson to Giulia’s working student. You will see that I go through the process fairly quickly. Malou knows this lesson and I can increase the criterion after almost every trial. You wouldn’t do that with a horse that is new to clicker training. Nevertheless, I make sure that we go through all the steps from the beginning and maintain a clean loops throughout.
We start all horses with this first lesson. It’s proven to be a very solid first step.
With Blondie, I used the same lesson with the difference that she was crib-biting when given feed. However, she found the clicker training so engaging, that she stayed in the targeting lesson remarkably long.
In this video, you see her in the old environment where she lived during the time when I did the research study on crib-biting. It is her first targeting lesson.
There are many details in this lesson that deserve highlighting. Where you present the target and where you feed is important. It takes skill to be able to handle the clicker, the target and the treat, without messing up your hands…and then your horse.
Let me know if you want me to go into more details.
Otherwise I assume that you know the lesson already and we move on. There is a lot of ground to cover.
What I want to highlight, though, is that we want a calm atmosphere. The horse is successful and it all remains ‘tranquillo’.
This is the kind of energy that I want throughout the training.
I am going to leave you here until the next email.
Michaela